Expecting God

This picture reminds me that there is so much beauty in a relationship with God. It’s been about seven years since I’ve given my life to Christ and as I examine how that decision has impacted me, I realize that this relationship is like no other; it transforms you. However, this transformation, I’ve noticed, is not always in ways we expect.

Many of us girls grow up watching fairy tale movies, where some maid or mistreated young woman meets this prince and becomes a princess. Usually some type of transformation takes place where she leaves her old life behind, gets an extreme makeover, and then lives happily ever after with her prince. I often think we expect our lives to go somewhat like this when we begin our relationship with God: a quick transformation, no pain, no hardships, no disappointment.

Our process is not always so simple. There have been times when I have felt disappointed by God because I expected things in my life to go a certain way. No matter how much effort and hard work I put into a particular goal, how much I prayed and believed that a situation would go the way I thought it should, things would go the opposite of what I desired. It actually took me a while to completely acknowledge these feelings because lets be honest, how can anyone be disappointed in God, the one who created the heavens and the earth with His words? Plus, I would hear other believers say, “God will never disappoint you” so I never dared to utter my feelings of disappointment to others, least on utter them to God Himself.

So I went on with life, burying those feeling of disappointment deep in my heart, not truly trusting God and believing that He wants the best for me. I was loving God and serving God, but in my heart I viewed Him as this guy who would just do what ever he wanted and had no concerns for what I wanted. I was in this bondage until I listened to a podcast by Steve Furtick that totally set me free. It talked about the gap between your expectations and your experience. He used the story of Lazarus’ death and how his sister Martha had asked Christ to come heal her brother, but instead Christ waited 2 days before He went and by the time He got there Lazarus was already dead. If you read this story in John 11, you will see that Martha was very disappointed in Christ and she didn’t mind telling him exactly how she felt. She said, “Lord if you had been here my brother wouldn’t have died.”

I’ve felt like Martha plenty of times, saying “really God? You left me hanging.” I knew that God wanted me to confront my feelings of disappointment when about two months ago, I got a text from a very close friend and brother in Christ, expressing some things God had placed on his heart to share with me. He said:

forgive and let go of past hurts. It’s holding you up and if that hurt is with me {God} let me know, I can take it. But I can’t use you if you are still wounded. I need you whole so you can show others how to be whole.

He was right. I needed to let some things go. These three years after graduating from Spelman College have been some of the most challenging years of my life, so much pain, so much disappointment, but God has shown me that He had to disappointment many of my expectations to exceed them. He has and is continuing to exceed my expectations. Because of this, I have been blessed to live a life beyond myself, beyond just what I expect. If you were to continue reading the story of Lazarus' death, you would see that Christ told Martha, it was for the glory of God. So like that princess, we do leave our old lives behind, we do get the makeover, and we do live happily every after with our prince, Christ, the Prince of Peace, but God constantly refines us first. I don't

believe

that God

wants us to lower our expectations, but He wants us to "Expect Him." Make it less about what we desire and more about His glory.